Open the Box
by dillpops
Summary: 'He always did like his smokes' - Faye Valentine, after the fall, looks for answers within his room. Short, sweet one-off.


Disclaimer: I don't own Cowboy Bebop   
  
Short Faye POV on her feelings, thoughts and after effects of Spike's demise. Read and review people! My first bebop fic! And I haven't even seen the whole series! Enjoy! A little one-off thing.  
  
  
  
  
  
I wanted to cut up pictures. You know, like you do with an old boyfriend, cut them up, burn them, drawn felt tip moustaches on their faces until you can look at them without welling up. Well I hadn't dumped him. In fact, I hadn't even dated him. Hell, since I'm confessing anyway, I don't even have any photos of him.  
  
Anyway, I don't feel that I'm really allowed to do that.  
  
He went, and I guess I felt bad about it. More than bad. Devastated perhaps, but I've never been good at emotions and sometimes it's better not to have them.  
  
Like when you gamble. Now theres something I like, bluffing is important, you can't let anything be shown to your opponents, not even when your about to lose. You have to convince them you're sure about what's going on. I like gambling.  
  
But as much as I like it, I gambled with his friendship, and even though I did all I could to win I lost, even though I was trying to win so hard.   
  
So I lost, and I feel like I'm in debt to him. He saved me once or twice, so I owe him and he didn't even let me pay him back. Typical of him.  
  
He owes Jet a lot too, but I know Jet won't be angry with that; he's not one of those types. Forgive and forget, that's him. Even when I duped him out of money time and time again, and emptied the Bebop's safe over and over again, and ate food I did nothing to get over and over again, he still let me come back over and over again. I guess he's like, perhaps, my family. Jet's a really good guy.  
  
Well I guess it'll just be Jet, and me, unless I decide to leave, or he decides to throw me out. I'd offer him comfort or something, but I think we're better off alone right now, it's a bit too soon. For me anyway.   
  
It's a week after and I feel no better. Well, I did remember a lot of things I liked about him, a lot of the annoying habits I hated about him and a lot of the little details you never notice until they're gone.  
  
Like the way he'd always be on the couch when you walked in, the way he was so predictable when it came to money. I could read him like a book, but I never read past the cover because it would mean him, and me perhaps, having to be emotional. And neither of us like being like that.   
  
If I had tried, it could have been that I'd have been able to understand what went on inside him those final hours before he, you know, died.  
  
So I tried looking for a diary; a lot of people keep a journal or something. Although it would be out of character for him, like using a hairbrush would be out of character for him. Yet you never know.  
  
Even though I was doubtful, I went into his old room anyway. I'd never done that before, at least I don't remember ever doing that before. It was never how I imagined it. I've barely done anything with my room; it's still the same apart from a few magazines and clothes strewn around the place. The same bare walls and metal bed. I'd never thought I'd need it for this long.  
  
His room was...home. If that's how you can describe it to someone. Like he'd been born into that room and had stayed there his whole life, well, when he wasn't on that damn couch. There were cuttings on the wall, pictures of cities on Venus and Mars, articles on Bruce Lee and Jazz music. Funny, I never really knew he liked Jazz, or perhaps I'd just forgotten it. There was a punch bag in the corner and a chest on the floor. Pairs of boots next to the bed and dirty washing on a chair, cigarettes on a small table next to a metallic lighter. Not his favourite lighter, of course, he'd have taken that with him, the way he always did.  
  
Even the bed was unmade from the last time he'd slept in it, the pillow dented where he'd laid his head for the final time.  
  
What a slob, it kinda smelled. Yet, it was the part missing from the ship. The messy, unorganised, self centred, lazy part that every one missed, the part that even though you could hate it sometimes, it made you whole.  
  
I pulled the lid of the steel chest up; peering into the collection that I'd never known had existed. I lifted the things out and put them carefully on the floor, ammo for his gun, more cigarettes (holding back I see, as always), socks. I winced at the pair, when did these last get washed? I laid them next to the rest quickly.  
  
I lifted out a dress suit, a shirt, a tie and black trousers, when had he worn these? A casino maybe, I knew I'd seen him in it at some point; it was just slipping my grasp for a while.  
  
Then I came to it. A card. There was a Christmas card, lying on the very bottom of the trunk in a white envelope. It had snow on the front and a little Earth Robin picking up a leaf of holly in its small beak. I couldn't help smiling, since when did he ever get cards? Mr Tough guy gets a pretty little birdie card, ironic.  
  
I read the address from the front of the envelope: S. Spiegel, The Bebop. I opened the card curiously; eager to see who would send Spike a card at Christmas when we'd barely even celebrated it on the ship.  
  
Spike,   
Happy Christmas and a Merry New Year.  
  
They'd gotten the slogan used for about two hundred years wrong. I looked for a name so I could see who to blame for this mistake. But it wasn't signed. I should have expected that. He had had too many secrets in his life, it would be pointless to try and find them out now.  
  
Perhaps it was from Julia, the one he'd wanted all along. Perhaps someone I'd never even heard of, maybe someone he didn't know either and it was just some junk mail.  
  
Inside the card next to the message was a note, in his handwriting, I could have recognised that scrawl anywhere. The corners were torn from the scrap and the ink was fading, but it was still readable:  
  
It was snowing on the day we met too,  
I felt a fate upon us  
More heart wrenching than passion  
More truthful than love  
Perhaps it had been sent from Julia after all; he kept it secret and safe then wrote a reply back. I turned the scrap over to read the other side:  
'Pure Snow', Year 1999 AD  
  
A song. He'd written down a song from the end of the millennium for someone. Did he know back when they met that they would die someday. What a strange song, how did he find it? I could never understand him.   
  
Did it really snow for them? Maybe it was the most fitting line he could find on short notice; I mean pathetic fallacy really falls into your head when you read it. I still can't believe I know that word 'pathetic fallacy'. I wonder if he knew that word as well.  
  
Julia.  
  
I placed the card and paper back into the envelope and lay it at the bottom of the trunk and covered it with the suit. I smoothed out the materials wrinkles with my hands and smiled. He never did want anyone else, not even me.   
  
What a romantic he had turned out to be though.   
  
I replaced his items and shut the lid of the trunk. Did I know him better now? Did I find what I came in here to find? No, not even now had I found out. Typical of him, never ever giving me any satisfaction, guess he got that last laugh after all.  
  
I left the room how I'd found it other than the trunk. The bed unmade, the clothes and items of junk everywhere. I never moved it either.   
  
Occasionally I sat in that room and smoked, thinking that maybe in the afterlife they didn't allow smoking, and just letting him get a few. He always did like his smokes.   
  
Day by day now, I seem to feel better than before I went into his room. Maybe it's just the time passing and the event slipping further and further behind me, or maybe it's the card and lyrics I found in that box that made him more...something. Yet now I can see him in my mind without feeling sad anymore, and I can visualise him exactly how to remember him.  
  
The man with an indescribable past.  
  
Spike The Lunkhead. 


End file.
